Anniversary of the most beloved movie

On November 19, 1975 at the Chicago Film Festival the premiere of Milos Forman's film "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" took place. A film that ranks #1 on FilmGourmand's list of favorite films.

Soon after its premiere, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" received 6 Golden Globe nominations, including all major ones, and won all. Then Milos Forman's film received 9 Oscar nominations and won 5 of them, and in all the most important nominations. Before "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" only one film - "It Happened One Night" by Frank Capra - achieved such success at the American Film Academy, and it happened back in 1935. But if Frank Capra's film simply did not have worthy competitors, and it achieved success, rather, "without fish", then among the competitors of Milos Forman's film were Stanley Kubrick's "Barry Lyndon", Sidney Lumet's "Dog Day Afternoon", and "Jaws" by Steven Spielberg.

"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" was a huge success not only at American film forums, but also in Europe. In particular, the British Film Academy gave the film 10 BAFTA nominations, of which the film won 6, again, the most important. The Danish Film Academy awarded the film its Bodil Prize for Best Non-European Film. The Italian Film Academy awarded the film two David di Donatello awards: Best Foreign Director (Milos Forman) and Best Foreign Actor (Jack Nicholson). In 1977, Milos Forman's film received a nomination for the French César Prize, but lost this nomination to the Italian film "C'eravamo tanto amati (We All Loved Each Other So Much)", directed by Ettore Scola.

Milos Forman's film "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" was not only a huge festival success, but also more than impressive financial performance: with a budget of $ 3 million, the film grossed about $ 109 million in the first year alone.

The above-described triumph of the film, so to speak, was "forged" for more than 10 years. The prehistory of the film is as follows. In 1962, aspiring writer Ken Kesey published his first novel, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". The idea for this novel formed in Kesey's mind around 1959, while studying writing at Stanford University and working as a psychiatric assistant at a Veterans Administration hospital in Menlo Park, California. As a psychiatrist's assistant, Kesey participated in experiments to study the effects on the body of LSD, mescaline, and other psychedelics. The main conclusion that Kesey came to from the results of the experiments was that most of the patients in the psychiatric ward of the hospital were not abnormal. They simply differed in non-standard behavior, as a result of which society tried to isolate them in various ways. Kesey's novel was based on these findings.

It so happened that even before publication, the novel by Ken Kesey, in the form of a proof, in 1961 fell into the hands of Kirk Douglas ("Spartacus", "Ace in the Hole"). Kirk Douglas immediately literally fell in love with the novel, bought the rights to its film adaptation from the author for 20 thousand dollars (more than 200 thousand dollars today), but before filming the book, he initiated its stage adaptation. On November 13, 1963, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" premiered on Broadway, written and directed by Dale Wasserman and starring Kirk Douglas as Randle McMurphy. The play by Dale Wasserman, based on the book by Ken Kesey, ran with great success for six years in theaters in San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Boston and other US cities. Outside the United States, productions have appeared in Paris, Mexico, Sweden, Argentina, Belgium, and Japan. It is said that Kesey himself confessed to Wasserman that if not for his play, the novel would have been forgotten. It's hard to say how fair this assumption was, but Newsweek included Ken Kesey's novel in the list of 100 most outstanding works of world literature, which also includes works by Homer, Shakespeare, Dante, Leo Tolstoy and many other literary geniuses.

The success of the play based on the play by Dale Wasserman inspired Kirk Douglas to start looking for producers to film an adaptation of Ken Kesey's novel. However, none of the film companies took on the film adaptation. In April 1966, Kirk Douglas ended up in Prague, where he met Milos Forman. Douglas told Forman about his plans for a Ken Kesey novel. Information about the novel interested Forman, and he asked Douglas to send him a copy of the book, which Douglas promised to do immediately upon his return to the States. Months, years passed... But Milos Forman never received the parcel with Ken Kesey's novel. As it turned out much later, the Czechoslovak customs confiscated this parcel without informing either Forman or Douglas. And two prominent filmmakers were terribly offended at each other: Forman considered himself deceived, and Douglas considered Forman ungrateful. Only in the early 70s, when Forman had already moved to the States, did they manage to meet and find out the reasons for their mutual resentment.

It is possible that the Czechoslovak customs was a tool of fate, because by the time Kirk Douglas and Milos Forman restored their friendly relations, Kirk's son Michael had matured and gained the necessary experience, who took over the duties of producing the picture. In addition, the delay in starting work on the film meant that the main role of McMurphy did not go to Kirk Douglas, who really wanted to play it, but knew that when you are under 60, it's too late to play it. Milos Forman really wanted Burt Reynolds to play the role of McMurphy. But Michael Douglas wanted the role to be given to a more popular and critically acclaimed actor. Jack Nicholson was recognized as such after his role in Roman Polanski's "Chinatown". He was offered the role of Randle Patrick McMurphy. But Nicholson did not get along with Forman, and during the filming they communicated with each other exclusively through the cameraman. Too differently they interpreted the image of the main character.

However, not only with Nicholson, Forman had disagreements about the interpretation of the images and the idea of ​​the film as a whole. Most of all, dissatisfaction with Forman's reading of the novel was expressed by its author Ken Kesey. He categorically did not like the transfer of the center of gravity from the "Chief" Bromden to Randle McMurphy. Yes, and Jack Nicholson in the role of the latter did not suit him. But, having conceded at one time the rights to film adaptation of the novel, Ken Kesey could not influence the creative process. By the way, the majority of viewers who read Kesey's book before watching Forman's film noted as a drawback of the picture a significant discrepancy between the film and Ken Kesey's book, and that the psychiatric clinic and methods of treating mental illness are not depicted as they should.

However, there is nothing surprising in this. Anyway, even Roger Ebert, who at the time of the film's release was 33 years old, also rated the film only three stars out of 4 possible, writing in a 1975 review:

"If Forman was preaching a parable, the audience seemed in total agreement with it, and I found that a little depressing: It's a lot easier to make noble points about fighting the establishment, about refusing to surrender yourself to the system, than it is to closely observe the ways real people behave when they're placed in an environment like a mental institution."

But already in 2003, having matured and become wise, and becoming a real guru of American film critics, Roger Ebert gave the film a maximum of 4 stars, included it in his list of "Great Movies" and wrote in a new review:

"The movie's simplistic approach to mental illness is not really a fault of the movie, because it has no interest in being about insanity. It is about a free spirit in a closed system."

One of the most respected Russian film critics, Sergei Kudryavtsev, wrote about Milos Forman’s film:

“We find ourselves in a madhouse, which turns out to be a kind of model of society. The same laws apply, similar orders prevail. But we come to the conclusion that in fact, society is a model of a madhouse. They change places. Patients in a psychiatric clinic are not crazy. They are in it voluntarily. Because this "psychiatric hospital" is like a refuge, the last refuge. But even there society does not leave them in. Some people rush about in a hopeless situation between personal and collective insanity. There is no alternative, either they will make you really crazy with the help of electric shocks, or they will undergo brainwashing in society using the means of mass stupidity and total manipulation .... Forman dislikes any manifestation of violence against a human person, he does not accept any form of suppression and submission. So ... in the enthusiastically accepted picture in the USA, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest”, ... the sober and impartial view of America, which is by no means a paradise on Earth, overshadowed by the Statue of Liberty, is undeniable." The film "appears exactly in the context of American cinema of the late 60s - early 70s. But at the same time it is also perceived as a universal parable of existential content, telling about the attitude of a person to the problem of freedom, whether it is only its own or socially significant."

In 2012, Milos Forman actually confirmed the correctness of Sergei Kudryavtsev's assessment of the film. Forman stated:

«To me, [the story] was not just literature, but real life, the life I lived in Czechoslovakia from my birth in 1932 until 1968. The Communist Party was my Nurse Ratched, telling me what I could and could not do; what I was or was not allowed to say; where I was and was not allowed to go; even who I was and was not."

Soviet censors understood this message of Forman well and did not allow the film, recognized as a masterpiece all over the world, to appear on Soviet cinema screens. Only in perestroika times were Soviet moviegoers, including myself, able to watch this masterpiece.

The vast majority of moviegoers, both in the 70s and today, perfectly understood what Milos Forman wanted to say and show. Evidence of this, firstly, is the grandiose festival success and financial results of the film, mentioned above. And secondly, 83% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users around the world gave this film scores from 8 to 10. And 28% of users gave the film the highest score - "ten". With that said, Milos Forman's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" has a rating of 11,231 according to FilmGourmand, making it 5th in the Golden Thousand.